Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Linux Kernel Boot Process In Brief

A brief description of the internals of Linux kernel boot on a PC.

Prelims:-BIOS finds the boot device and loads the Master Boot Record (MBR). The first 512 bytes in MBR contains the "primary boot loader". Out of the 512 bytes, 446 bytes contains the "primary boot loader" proper, the next 64 bytes contains a partition table, and last two bytes will contain the magic number OxAA55 which acts as a simple validation check.